Ketamine Enhances Therapy How Does it Do This?

First, let’s look at Ketamine. Ketamine is a medication used mainly for anesthesia.  In the low dosages we administer, it induces a trance-like state while providing pain relief, sedation, mild euphoria and calm detachment.  Psychotherapy, on the other hand is more often occasioned by initial anxiety related to the alien experience it commonly represents along with commensurate defensiveness. Repressed, memories are sometimes buried deep within the psyche; making it difficult for patients to access painful information which can ignite a flood of unwanted emotions. Therapy done during a Ketamine experience by-passes these barriers and promotes a willingness in the patient to move forward. Those same emotions are present, yet they are experienced in an aura of calm and with the capacity for rational editing by the patient.

Therapy is a journey…and often an arduous one.  Therapy – say for depression – may take weeks and produce little reduction in the severity of the symptoms. Time is a crucial factor as suicidal thoughts may compel patients to act upon the self-destructive impulses before therapy can become effective. Anti-depressant medications, likewise, have either a delayed, positive effect (up to six weeks), or none at all (in 60% of patients).

In the current best-case scenario, therapy alone or combined with medication follows predictable stages leading to change.  Here is what this looks like:

1. Orientation:  Both you and your therapist will not be completely comfortable with each other at the beginning.  The normal social inhibitions are present and manage to keep things superficial. It takes time to become more open about what you are expecting, thinking and feeling. Rapport building is on-going as you begin to understand how the therapist is trying to help you help yourself.  During this time the therapist’s role is to validate patients’ experiences.  This stage builds trust and safety. Sometimes this phase offers a small reduction in symptoms.
2. Identification: This is when you and your therapist start deciding exactly what you want to work on. If you had initial trouble opening up to feelings, you might now find it a little easier to be genuine. The therapist’s role is to help you lower your defenses. This begins the therapist’s work to empower you.
3. Exploration: This represents the stage where you learn to re-frame painful experiences. Herein lies the opportunity to rethink your beliefs and other people’s motives. Hidden thoughts and feelings usually rise into consciousness. This is an uncomfortable shift which occurs in the therapeutic process. The phase breaks through resistance and seeks to move beyond the impasses that have prevented growth and change.
4. Resolution: For some therapy is a solution to a problem.  Your goal may have been to feel better or work through issues.  For others therapy is a lifelong journey to become better versions of themselves and maintain good mental health. You might be the patient whom is less  concerned with reaching an end, and more concerned with changing old patterns of behavior.  And this takes time and practice.  This is also a time to reflect on everything you have accomplished.  This phase of therapy evolves through insights emerging from awareness; through rapid  assimilation of new information; and the implementation of new coping and learning styles.

Conventional Talk Therapy is extrinsically linear;  being a predicable and consistent system.

Ketamine Assisted Therapy is not. Although the process of change adheres to a similar paradigm, it is greatly enhanced by the mind altering properties of ketamine.  If traditional therapies are impeded by psychological defense mechanisms – and they are – ketamine dissolves these barriers. Ketamine opens the mind to possibilities limited by talk therapy alone. Ketamine produces a sense of timelessness and organically generates new neural pathways which accelerate new learning. Catharsis is experienced with an absence of emotional turmoil and disorganization. Ketamine acts as a neural growth stimulator.  It causes an increase in the connections between synapses and boosts the brain’s overall functional capacity. As a result, serotonin production is ramped up quickly and in a natural, sustainable way. Thus the resolution stage of therapy is achieved in a very early stage as compared with the time it takes to reach this goal in traditional therapies.